The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for an hour each weekday afternoon. We have no commercial breaks and this entire hour is given to taking your phone calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, this is one hour and one place that you can ask those questions.

We can discuss them openly, and if you see things differently from the way the host does, then feel free to bring that fact up and we can talk about the alternative viewpoint that you would like to put on the table. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737.

I just want to mention that tomorrow night, Thursday night, 6:30 to 8:00, I'll be speaking in Covina, California, in Southern California. It's actually the city I grew up in. I would have graduated from Covina High School if our family had not moved to Orange County in 1970 and I also probably wouldn't have found Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa if we hadn't moved at that time. I liked being in Covina, but it's providential that we moved away.

I haven't been back to Covina many times, but there is a men's group that's been meeting on Thursday nights at a Starbucks on Citrus Boulevard or Citrus Avenue. The address is at our website. I spoke at it once before, several months ago, and I'm speaking again there this Thursday, tomorrow, on the subject of agnosticism, atheism, and anti-theism.

Saturday morning, we have our monthly Bible study in Temecula. That's at 8:00 Saturday morning in Temecula. Both of those in the next few days are opportunities in Southern California if you're in that region. We're on the air all over the country, but we have a lot of listeners here in Southern California.

Go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. Look under announcements and you'll find the information, time, and place of those gatherings. Those are both men's meetings, by the way. Tomorrow night and Saturday morning are both men's Bible studies, one in Covina and one in Temecula. Now I have nothing else to announce except that our first caller today is Tom in Gainesville, Florida. Hello Tom, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Tom: Thank you. I'd like to go to the meeting about agnosticism and anti-theism, but I'm in Florida.

Steve Gregg: Well, there's these things they call airplanes, you know.

Tom: Or I can't see it online, can I?

Steve Gregg: Well, I doubt that it's going to be streamed. I won't be streaming it and it is held at a Starbucks, so it may not be the best of recording places. I don't know what's going to be done there. I don't have any plans to do anything except teach.

Tom: Okay, I have two questions. Over the last 60 years, have you ever thought to yourself that maybe something might be wrong in the Bible?

Steve Gregg: Well, wrong in what sense? You mean out of sync with the way we think today, or do you mean something that's affirmed that isn't true?

Tom: Either.

Steve Gregg: Well, I don't think the Bible affirms anything that isn't true. I do believe that there are things in the Bible that people assume these certain passages are affirming that aren't true, but that's because of interpretation. Most people in America, most people living in modern times, don't have any special training in the reading of ancient Near Eastern literature.

They pick up the Bible as if it's an American book written to our generation. If it doesn't communicate facts the way that we are accustomed to hearing them taught in our modern way, people might think that's not true, that can't be true. But again, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. You can get the majority of the things that are necessary to know from the Bible without any real specialized training at all.

But the things that you're referring to that might sound like they're not true, at least anything that on the surface we might say, "Well, I don't know that, that doesn't sound right," I have never discovered anything in that category which is not resolved simply by a responsible interpretation of the idioms and the flow of thought of the writers and so forth. But that requires some awareness of biblical idioms and Near Eastern communication styles and things like that because the Bible is, after all, written over 2,000 years ago by people who don't speak our language.

Even if you translate their words into our language, their idioms and their ways of speaking are very different than ours. So obviously, you'll understand the fine points of the Bible much better if you have some familiarity with those subjects, which most Americans don't bother to gain. So if we approach the Bible simply as a book written for Americans in modern times and presume that it's going to use modern methods of communicating information, yeah, you're probably going to run into some trouble once in a while.

But no, I haven't, because I do study the Bible. Because I've studied it for 50 or 60 years, I am fairly familiar with the idioms of the Bible and the way it talks. Because I am, I'm able to, at least most of the time, figure out exactly what they're saying. Or at least close enough to realize it doesn't really present any difficulties. See, a lot of people think the Bible contradicts itself. That would mean that there'd be two passages in the Bible that can't both be true at the same time.

But the point is, people who see contradictions are generally speaking expecting something that the Bible isn't intending. If the Old Testament says you have to be circumcised to be one of God's people, and you come to the New Testament and it says you shouldn't be circumcised because you've fallen from grace and you've become estranged from Christ, obviously those would be contradictory statements if they were both made at the same time.

But the earlier one has to do with the Old Covenant, and it was true; the statements were true in the context of the Old Covenant. But the second one is in the New Covenant and it's true in the context of the New Covenant. So if people simply just pick up the Bible and read it without any knowledge of the flow of history or the way things are said, yeah, they'll find all kinds of problems. I don't find any of those because I don't read the Bible that way. I actually have made it my goal to read the Bible responsibly, and that is something that not everyone has made any effort to do. So no, I haven't had any serious problems with anything in the Bible thinking it's not true. But then, you know, I have to teach the Bible. I ran a Bible school where I taught verse by verse through the whole Bible every year, or at least through major books of it every year. So I had to research, I had to figure things out. I didn't want to get up there and say things that were uninformed. Have you found things like that in the Bible?

Tom: Yeah, I have. I can't think offhand, but I have. And just like you mentioned right there, that's confusing to me where the Old Testament about circumcised, not circumcised. I don't totally understand that. The Old Covenant is different than the New Covenant, right?

Steve Gregg: Right. That's why one's old and one's new. It says actually in Hebrews, when it's talking about that difference in Hebrews 7, it tells about how the Old Covenant had a priesthood that was entirely made up of people who were descended from Aaron, Moses' brother, and of the tribe of the Levites, so the Levitical priesthood or the Aaronic priesthood, it's called. That was the only priesthood acknowledged in the Old Testament.

Now, in Hebrews chapter 7, it says God has changed the priesthood now with Jesus. Jesus is the great High Priest. He's not of the order of the Levites; he's of the order of Melchizedek. And that's forever. So the Levitical priesthood is gone forever, and Jesus' priesthood has displaced it. Now what's interesting is in that context, I believe it's in verse 12, Hebrews 7:12, it says, "Since there's a change of the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the whole law."

And that's true. The law had a certain priesthood that was ordained by it, and that priesthood doesn't exist anymore. And so what he's saying is the law has changed. The Old Testament law was relevant to Old Testament times. But even in Old Testament times, Jeremiah, who lived under that old order, he predicted in Jeremiah 31 verses 31 through 34 that God would make a New Covenant.

Now he didn't say it would render the old covenant obsolete, but the writer of Hebrews tells us that is true in Hebrews 8:13, it says when he speaks of a New Covenant, he's made the first covenant obsolete. So you've got the Old Covenant in the Old Testament. In fact, the word Testament means covenant. And then you've got the New Covenant. Jesus made the New Covenant with his disciples in the upper room and started a new order, and according to Hebrews, that eliminated the old order, made it obsolete.

So that's why the rules are different in the Old Testament than in the New. Not all of them, because many things Jesus taught affirmed moral issues and so forth that the Old Testament taught. But all the ritual things, which would include circumcision and offering animal sacrifices in the temple and keeping holy days and stuff like that, being clean or unclean, all those things are ritual things; those are changed. Those are not part of the New Covenant; they were part of the old.

Tom: Okay, I learned something. Now, the University of Florida has a religion department and my second question is, they have classes in the history of Christianity and world religion. What do you think of those classes?

Steve Gregg: Generally speaking, if it's a University of Florida, they're not going to be teaching Christian viewpoints about things. Ever since I was young in my teens, and that was many decades ago, high schools had the Bible as history, that kind of class that was offered in some schools. Of course, all universities have to have some kind of history of religions or something like that, or else how could people be educated if they didn't know anything about religions, which are one of the major aspects of human history and culture?

Anyway, of course they have to teach that. But if they don't teach it from a Christian viewpoint, and a secular university virtually never would, then they're just going to be teaching as if the Bible is not the word of God, as if it's just Iron Age or Bronze Age writings from ancient superstitious people. They'll see some aspect of the narrative that probably connects at some points with real history, but they're going to assume most of it is mythology.

They're going to teach Christianity the same way they would teach Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam. They're going to do it as they would say, objectively. That means from a point of view that's not intrinsically favorable toward it.

Tom: Is this okay that University of Florida does this? Is that okay?

Steve Gregg: I don't like it. I don't like it because the Bible isn't simply a history book, although it does contain a great deal of history. The Bible is a revelation from God. Now, if somebody wants to teach some kind of a whole Bible course and they don't approach it for what it is, namely a revelation from God, then they're going to have to present it as something very different than that.

Now, students who go to the university and take history of religions or whatever or Christianity or the Bible, they're going to be getting an unbelieving, therefore biased viewpoint of the Bible, which is going to be filled with all kinds of criticisms that one would not have and would not need to have if they approached it as the Word of God.

Tom: But private universities do it differently, right?

Steve Gregg: I don't know. Christian universities, Christian colleges, probably would teach it from a Christian point of view. But any university that's not a Christian one, and that would include state or community colleges or whatever, they're not going to teach the Bible in the sense that a Christian believes the Bible. I am sorry, I hit your button by accident, but I was about ready to move along anyway. I'm sorry to cut you off. We need to take some more callers. You've been talking to me for over 15 minutes and we do have only an hour program with a lot of people waiting. Call again, I know you will. Thanks for joining us today. Tyler in Dallas, Texas, welcome.

Tyler: Hey Steve, good to talk to you. I was hoping you could help me wrap my mind around this. So is there any way to have eternal life other than through Jesus Christ?

Steve Gregg: No, because the Bible says eternal life is in Him. So one only has it in Him.

Tyler: Okay. So following that, anyone in heaven is in Christ, right?

Steve Gregg: Yes.

Tyler: So if you're not in Christ, you would be in what we call hell or Gehenna, the lake of fire, whatever we want to call it. And those people do not have Christ, correct?

Steve Gregg: A person in hell does not have Christ. That'd be correct.

Tyler: Okay. So following that, if someone believes in eternal conscious torment, wouldn't that person in hell being tortured eternally while being conscious, wouldn't they have some form of eternal life?

Steve Gregg: Well, that's right. That's one of the great arguments against the traditional view of hell. Another argument against it is that the Bible doesn't teach it anywhere very specifically. There's about a handful, literally about a handful, of verses—three of them in Revelation and two of them in the parable of the sheep and the goats—that sound as if hell may be a place of eternal conscious torment.

Notably, those two contexts are among the more symbolic types of literature in the Bible. Revelation's pretty much the only place where there's a few verses that talk about tormenting forever and ever, but those are in passages where there's other symbolic elements which makes you wonder, is it symbolic or is it literal?

There's a whole lot of statements throughout the entire Bible saying that the wages of sin is death, which is a somewhat different concept. And it says in 1 Timothy 6:16 that in Christ alone, or in God alone, is immortality. It says he alone possesses immortality, which means that we don't. But if we're in Him, we share in His immortality.

Now the people who believe in the traditional doctrine of hell of eternal conscious torment, they would say immortality doesn't mean what it sounds like because they would say everybody's essentially immortal; it's just that some will live immortally away from God and some immortally with God, and living away from God is being dead spiritually. And so that's how they would argue it.

Tyler: Where do they get that from?

Steve Gregg: They get it because of an *a priori* acceptance of the traditional view of hell. There is nothing in the Bible that teaches that human beings were created immortal. You don't get it in Genesis, you don't get it in the Old Testament at all, you don't get it in Jesus' teaching, you don't get it in the Epistles.

The point here is that there are a few verses that have been used to support the traditional case for hell and then it has been read into a whole bunch of verses that don't teach it. Verses that simply talk about there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth and that kind of thing, there'll be in outer darkness—none of those passages say anything about eternal conscious torment, but that is read into it once a person has accepted the traditional view.

And most Christians are taught the traditional view, maybe even before they become Christians. I think most unbelievers, when they think of hell, they think of it as a place of eternal conscious torment. And then most people when they become Christians, that's what they're taught also. So that's in their heads and they read it into verses that don't say it because there's a few verses that seem to say it.

Now, if it is true, if there is eternal conscious torment, then of course everybody, saved and unsaved, are going to live forever either in heaven or in hell. And that's something that's just a consequence of believing that doctrine. So if you believe that people are going to live forever in hell without Christ, then you must believe that immortality is innate or immortality is something that everybody has, whether they're believers or not. The Bible simply doesn't agree with that. The Bible indicates that that's not true. So that's one of the stronger arguments.

Tyler: The only argument I've heard from friends who believe in eternal conscious torment was, they talked about before sin entered the world in the garden, they believe Adam and Eve would have been immortal because there was no death before sin entered the world. So they would have lived forever.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, that's an assumption they're making that doesn't have biblical basis. We read that God put in the garden, before there was a fall, he put two trees besides the ordinary trees. One was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the other was the tree of life. Now, if they would eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would die. But that's because they would be cut off from the tree of life.

It says in Genesis 3 that when they did sin, God cut them off from the tree of life lest they should eat it and live forever. In other words, the tree of life, which was not forbidden to them—in fact, no doubt they were expected to eat it—they would live forever eating it. But not eating it, they wouldn't. In other words, they were potentially immortal but not naturally immortal. They could be immortal if they ate of the tree of life. Apart from that, they couldn't.

Human nature was not naturally immortal but God gave them the opportunity to be immortal, as he does for us now. The Bible says God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him will not perish. The word perish means be destroyed. That's what the word means in Greek. So those who believe in Christ will not be destroyed but will have everlasting life. So having everlasting life is a condition based upon believing.

Just like Jesus said, "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life." Now if Adam and Eve had been eating the tree of life without being cut off from it, they would have lived forever because of the merits of the tree of life, not because of their nature. It would keep them, just like we eat of Christ, so to speak, and we have ongoing eternal life though we don't have it in ourselves. It is in Christ and we are in Christ.

That's what it says in 1 John 5:11 and 12. It says, "This is the message that God has given to us, eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that has the Son has life. He that does not have the Son of God does not have life." So eternal life, people don't have it if they're not in Christ. People who have the Son have that eternal life because that's where it is; it's in the Son. So Adam and Eve and us are not born immortal. Only God possesses immortality, the Bible says, but he has it and he shares his life with us when we attach to him like branches to a vine or simply by being included in Christ.

So that's where eternal life is. Now, I mean, I don't know any verse that says something other than that in the Bible. So that's how I would answer your question. But that is one of the arguments people use against the traditional view of hell. Bubba in Tampa, Florida, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Bubba: Good afternoon. I really appreciate your knowledge and background and depth of explanations. I wanted to bring up, in the Bible I remember in Catholic school, there was I don't know if it's what you call it, but it was the story about Christians worshipping golden idols. What exactly was that that they talked about?

Steve Gregg: Well, I'm not sure what you're referring to. People have worshipped golden idols and other kinds of idols throughout history. Generally speaking, Christians don't, although some who were part of the institutional church could be accused of doing so. You know, in the Old Testament, the Jews were told not to worship any gods other than God. And yet they did.

Notably, right almost at the beginning of their relationship with God, they violated it by making a golden calf which they worshipped as if it was a god. That was a golden idol. Throughout their history, the Jews, when they were in rebellion against God, which was most of their history, made idols of Baal and Molech and Chemosh and other pagan gods. These were not always made of gold, but some of them were. Some of them were gold-plated, some were silver-plated.

Isaiah talks about this, how they go to a tree and they cut it down, or even Jeremiah chapter 10 talks about this. They cut down a tree, they carve it into a shape, they plate it with gold and silver and they worship it as a god. So, you know, some people, Jews, throughout their history, did worship idols that were either gold or gold-plated. Now, Christians have never approved of that kind of thing, although there have been times, and in fact, Protestants like myself sometimes feel very uncomfortable about the practices of those churches like Catholic Church, which do make images. Not necessarily of gold, but they make images and put them up in the churches, and in some cases, the people worship them, pray to them, kiss them, venerate them and so forth.

Now, they'd say, "Well, we're not worshipping them, we're just venerating them." And I think, "Well, I'm not really sure what the difference is between worshipping and venerating, at least to the naked eye. No one can tell the difference between venerating it and worshipping it." Maybe if there is a difference, God has to know what that is, but it's got to be a very fine line. I'd just stay away from it altogether.

But as far as worshipping images of any kind, the Jews did it and they were forbidden to do it. Christians have done it, or I'm not going to say Christians, I'm going to say people who have been part of the institutional Christian church who identify as Christians have done it. Now, you know, I can't say what's in any individual's heart. You know, to a Protestant like myself, when we hear people praying to Mary or the saints or bowing before an image, that looks like worship to us. That looks like idolatry to us.

And they say, "No, no, it's different, it's different. Just veneration," whatever. Now, all I can say is God would know the difference. But I would hate to live my Christian life or worship in such a way that only God could tell whether I'm worshipping an idol or not because anyone else looking on would think I am. That wouldn't be a very good testimony and I am supposed to live my Christian life in a way that glorifies God to the onlookers. And therefore to bow or worship anything or appear to be doing so would be something I would avoid like the plague. And I think God would want to be done.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would not bow to the idol in Babylon in Daniel 3, even though they could have said, "Well, we're not really worshipping it." They just wouldn't do it because they were Jews. You're listening to the Narrow Path. We have another half hour coming up. We're not done yet, but we do take a brief break. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Don't go away.

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Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or disagreement with the host, feel free to give me a call. The number is 844-484-5737. I'm going to have to say the lines are not open right now, they're all full, so don't call yet, but if you call in a little while, a line may open up. 844-484-5737. Our next caller today is Dennis from Tecumseh, Oklahoma. Hi Dennis, good to hear from you.

Dennis: Hi Steve, good to talk to you. Hey, I've got a question about home churching and reformation. It goes like this: I've been part of a home church for the last three years plus and it's just been awesome. There's five families, ten adults and about 15 kids. And I've been a Christian since 1972 through Calvary Riverside.

Anyway, I've become convinced, the more I've thought about home churching and read about it, etc., that I do believe in my heart and mind that it's the beginning of a second reformation, a slow and underground beginning, but I think it will be very different from Luther's, the one Luther launched. I think it'll be slower, less dramatic, but deeper and more profound, and may take 50-plus years to become more fruitful. Anyway, I called to ask your thoughts about that outlook.

Steve Gregg: Well, I think you could easily be correct. I can't see the future, but I could see that that could be the future and I think it'd be a positive thing if it were. Luther, of course, although he broke off from the Roman Catholic Church, he retained the concept of what we call institutional church. Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church were institutional; he never questioned that.

He still believed in a state church. The Catholic Church was the state church of most of Western Europe until Luther and the Reformation took place, and then Luther and others, Zwingli and Calvin and so forth later, began to operate within Protestant churches where they had a state church. There was never any question as to whether the church was sort of an organ of the state or the state an organ of the church, one way or the other, so that, you know, to actually have a false doctrine would be like being treasonous toward the state, which is why the Catholic Church and the Lutherans and the Calvinists often killed heretics.

It wasn't just that they were thin-skinned; it was more that they saw heresy as a treason against the religion of the state church. And just like traitors were hanged or killed in one way or another, so were heretics if they didn't recant. Now I'm not favorable toward that, but that was the way things were seen. Now, at the same time as Luther and earlier than Calvin, there was a movement called the Radical Reformation, the Anabaptist movement, and they were the first in at that time, in 1,200 years, to say, "No, the church and the state are not joined. The state has one function, the church has another, and the church is a separate domain from the state and independent of the state because it answers to God, whereas the state answers to either the populace or to the kings."

And so they got themselves in trouble with the state churches for believing that, but that idea did catch on, at least by the time America was founded, that became kind of a general understanding: the state and the church are not the same thing. Now home churches, of course, are the epitome of not having institutional church. You're kind of under the radar. Not that they have to be under the radar, but it's just in the nature of meeting in a home. It's not as visible as a cathedral or a big church building on a street corner with a big parking lot and so forth.

Obviously, home churches by their very nature are going to be restricted in size. And depending on how they are run, they could indeed represent a significant break from institutional churches and that would be a reformation and that would probably, if handled correctly, lead to some good. I say if handled correctly because many people who start house churches still have institutional church in their head. They're just starting a little institutional church and they often have many of the same attitudes toward it, like having a pastor and things like that, which were not in the early church.

And so, I don't know if it's going to be a revolution or not or a new reformation or not. It certainly has caught on in many, many places and I myself am part of a home church also. And we'll just see. You know, the bigger churches, there is some value in larger numbers of Christians getting together, but I don't know if that's as big a value as the value of small groups of Christians getting together.

Obviously in a smaller group, they can actually have relationships with each other, which is the idea of church. You're actually relating with people, you're actually getting involved in their lives, you know if they have needs, you can contribute to their needs. Everyone can contribute to the needs of the few who have special crises and things like that. They can counsel each other without setting up an appointment a week ahead of time with the pastor. I mean, there's real relationships are what the early church had and at least that's what Paul describes and I believe that's what Acts describes.

So I mean, if we can get back to a situation where the church, the norm of the church, is for small groups of people to really be invested in each other's lives, sensitive to each other's needs, willing to lay down their lives for each other, this would be a very big change from virtually any institutional church I've ever visited. And it's a good thing.

But it is rather below the radar, which can be a good thing in times of persecution, but we might hope that it won't always be times of persecution. It's good to be above ground too. After all, Jesus said, "Let your light shine before men so they'll see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven." So if the church is only comprised of meetings held in homes, which typically, once you get about 25 or 30 people in the average home church, you've got a big crowd. Then it's not going to be as visible a light.

I think home churches are particularly valuable in times of persecution. The Chinese church, in so far as it survived through Mao Zedong's reign of terror, they survived in home churches. The church of South Korea in the 80s, though they had some of the biggest congregations in the world, they also had a strong emphasis on these congregations breaking into small cell groups or home groups because they were always aware that North Korea might dig a tunnel under the demilitarized zone and pop up in their neighborhood and kill the Christians.

I mean, that's really the way that, for example, Paul Yonggi Cho was preaching about small home groups and stuff in times of persecution or impending persecution. It's very good to have a somewhat below the radar setup. But when there's not specific persecution, I think it's good to have both. And I think that there's two ways this is done. One is better than the other in my opinion, but that's my opinion. Now my opinion might be wrong.

But sometimes a big church, recognizing the need for their members to be more integrated into each other's lives, will break into small groups, maybe midweek groups, Wednesdays or some night of the week, and they'll try to get everyone to be in a small group or not. But this will be usually considered to be extracurricular. I mean, it may be very strongly encouraged, but they still think of the big Sunday meeting as the main church, which means people have the idea they could just go to the big meeting and they're involved in the church. And if they really want to get into some other level that's not mandatory, they can go to one of these small meetings.

Now, this being so, I don't think it substantially challenges the whole institutional nature of a large church. But I think, like when I was in the 80s when I taught in Australia a couple times for a Jesus Revolution group over there called the True Vine Christian Community, their church was made up of small house groups. They had about 50 house groups within a 50-mile radius, and they all got together on Sundays or some days, nights, in a rented hall.

And it wasn't always at the same rented hall. They would just rent different halls at different times, and no one knew where the meeting was going to be except those who were in the small groups. Because the small groups were considered to be the fellowship. The Sunday night bigger group where they all came together was more of a worship time. There's a teaching, but it was like a larger celebration.

And this way the church was primarily seen as these smaller house groups, but they didn't have to feel like they're just part of a little tiny remnant that's hiding out in a cave somewhere. Every Sunday they got together with all the house groups, and it was a big group and pretty exciting. Made it clear you were part of something big, you're part of something significant, even if your primary life in that group was based on the smaller group.

I'm not sure really how to change a big church dynamic into a home church dynamic. But I would think that in an area where there's a lot of home churches already, that for them to join together periodically, maybe quarterly, maybe monthly, I don't know, as often as they think it's a good idea, with other home churches in their areas. You know, most big areas, populated areas have quite a few home churches now. It'd be great if various home churches would get together in a larger meeting just so, first of all, they can fellowship with more people and they also have more of a visible presence in the community.

So I think big groups can be good, small groups are essential, and the house church I think would be the primary church and I think people need to understand it that way. If you're in a church, you're going to one of these small groups. But you also have the enjoyment of the larger group when those small groups get together periodically. That's how I see it. If that would happen, I would see that as a kind of a second reformation of sorts. That's how I would look at it.

Dennis: Awesome. Thank you.

Steve Gregg: Okay Dennis. Thank you man. Good talking to you. Alex in Sacramento, California, welcome to the Narrow Path.

Alex: Hello Steve. I just took you off speakerphone. I was wondering, a while back I got a couple of your cartoon books. They were free off your website. They were really, really good. In fact, I want to read one this afternoon. Do you still draw?

Steve Gregg: I don't have much time for drawing. I still can draw. I mean I drew in my youth. Yeah, I'm sure it's like riding a bicycle. But yeah, I drew quite a few comic books. I think five or six were in print when I was in my 20s. Five or six different comic books. And then there were like 50 small tracts that were in comic style. They were like 24-page tracts, a little bit like Jack Chick's tracts, which were more famous than mine, but different.

Alex: You drew those too?

Steve Gregg: I drew about 50 different titles of those as well as about five different comic books.

Alex: Good grief. I have the two off your website. I didn't get into the second one too much because I liked the first one. They're great, Steve. You know what, man, and I've been thinking this for a long time: do people get those very much?

Steve Gregg: Not much because we don't sell them. I don't know how many people download them. We actually have boxes of them, but we don't sell anything. When people write to us and say, "Send us some of your comics," we send them for free.

Alex: Right. I hope too many people don't just take them for free and send you a few bucks. But man, you know what, those would be so helpful. I don't know about all these other cartoons you're talking about, but those two right there...

Steve Gregg: Well, the others are no longer in print. The two you're talking about are the only ones still available. The others just went out of print decades ago and it's too expensive to keep them in print. But these, yeah, the two that are there, they have been used in prison ministries, they've been used in adult and adolescent and children's Sunday school classes. They're used in a lot of different kinds of ministries.

For those who don't know what he's talking about, they are discipleship manuals that I drew and wrote back—the first one I did when I was 19, although it's been redrawn since then. And then the second one I did when I was 30, but I did lots of others in between. They're funny. For those who don't know, if you go to our website thenarrowpath.com, there's actually a tab at the top that says comic books. If you click, you can see and read those comics. You can download them if you want to print them out too.

Anyway, Alex, is that your only question?

Alex: No, but I just wanted to mention something else that reminded me of your cartoon books and that is, have you seen "God of Wonders," 2008, and the newer one?

Steve Gregg: No. What is that? Is that a publication?

Alex: It's a documentary film. And you know something? The impact that could have on people are like your cartoon books. "God of Wonders," 2008, please see it, and then there's a later one that is so... see it man, you're not going to believe it.

Steve Gregg: All right, thank you Alex. Still practice drawing. Keep practicing. If I was practicing, I'd probably draw for publication. If I had time to practice. All right, God bless, thanks for your call.

By the way, yeah, those books can be read and seen and printed if you want from our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says comic books. Those books have been out for decades and others were but have gone out of print and it's been a long time since I wrote one or drew one, but yeah, if I didn't have so much going on, I could draw them still. Okay, let's talk to who's been there longest? Matt from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Hi Matt, welcome.

Matt: Hey, thanks for taking my call, sir. I have an inquiry. We had kind of a conversation debate in Sunday school. They were talking about in the time of Jesus, I just assumed that the Pharisees of that day were Jewish, but they were claiming that they were Moabites. I was struggling to find scripture to back up either yea or nay on that. I was wondering if you could help me out on that.

Steve Gregg: Who in the world was saying they were Moabites?

Matt: That did not sound right to me either.

Steve Gregg: Was there like one person in the group that said, "Oh, I think they're Moabites," or was the teacher suggesting they were Moabites?

Matt: No, no, it was one student.

Steve Gregg: Okay, that student just doesn't know what he's talking about. They were Jews. I mean, they even said, "We're not born of fornication, we have Abraham as our father," in John chapter 8. And Jesus said, "I know you are descended from Abraham, but if Abraham was your father, you'd do the works of Abraham." So I mean, Jesus and they both indicate that they were descended from Abraham. The Moabites were descended from Lot, Abraham's nephew. All right, well thank you for your call. Let's talk to Steve in Tustin, California. Hi Steve, welcome.

Steve: Hi Steve. I've got a question about the Greek Orthodox concept of *Theosis* as being scriptural.

Steve Gregg: Well, in so far as they are talking about how we partake of the divine nature and share in God's nature, they are certainly not far from the truth. I think they might go too far, at least in their language they do. They actually talk about us becoming gods, divinization. I don't think that we become gods and they probably don't either in the sense that it sounds like.

It does say in 2 Peter 1:4 that we have become partakers of the divine nature, which is probably the verse they lean on maybe more than any other. I would also add to that 2 Corinthians 3:18, where Paul said that we all with open faces beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are changed from glory to glory into that same image.

And 1 John chapter 3 says, "Beloved, now we are the children of God and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." So there's obviously a becoming like Christ because of the nature of God given to us.

But I don't, when Peter said we become partakers of the divine nature, I think he's just referring to an aspect of having been filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, and His nature is infused with ours at rebirth. So we now have the Holy Spirit in us who is the same thing as having the divine nature. Being changed from glory to glory into the image of Christ as by the Spirit of the Lord, it says in 2 Corinthians 3:18. Obviously that would be speaking of that divine nature seemingly becoming more and more dominant or prominent in us so we become more like Jesus by nature.

And there is something supernatural definitely happening there. I just would not want to go so far as to say we have become God or will become God. I don't think that language is helpful. And I think that, you know, when you talk about Eastern Orthodox people and when they use that kind of language, I think they would back away from it and say, "We don't mean it the way you're thinking of it."

And I always think, well, if you don't mean it the way it sounds like you mean it, maybe find another way of talking about it, because I have some views that are perhaps maybe controversial in some circles, but I try to diminish the controversy as much as possible in making it plain in words that don't unnecessarily shock people who are of another viewpoint.

Trying to promote unity and also promote understanding. Now, if they don't mean that we become gods like Joseph Smith and the Mormons say—they want to become gods—if the Eastern Orthodox don't mean it that way, and I think they don't, then maybe they should use other language because they're not using language the Bible uses. I mean, to say we have the divine nature, that's biblical, but to say we are gods is not biblical.

Steve (Caller): They've been using that language for much longer than there has been English.

Steve Gregg: Well, okay. The Eastern Orthodox Church has been, their literature and so forth is in Greek, I believe. The New Testament's written in Greek. The Old Testament was translated into Greek three centuries before Christ. Greek is a biblical language and yet there is no place in the Bible, even in Greek, that has the equivalent of saying we become God or gods.

Steve (Caller): There's no place where it talks about the Trinity either, but that's something that the Desert Fathers came up with. That doesn't appear in the Bible.

Steve Gregg: Well, and it's not controversial among Christians. To say you believe in the Trinity simply means that you believe the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit are God and there's only one God. Now, those statements are true; they are made in the Bible. The Bible does say the Father is God, it does say the Son is God, does say the Holy Spirit is God, and it says there's one God. If you affirm all those things, then you believe in some kind of a Trinity.

Now, somebody's particular formulation of the Trinity, you might have problems with and I might too. But the point is, it's more controversial in Christian circles to say you don't believe in the Trinity than to say you do, because if you say Trinity, you're simply using shorthand for the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit are all God and they're all the one God instead of three gods.

Now, that's not a controversial doctrine. When you say, "We become gods," you're using language that does not resemble the Bible. True, the word Trinity isn't found in the Bible, but the word Trinity is shorthand for a synthesis of what the Bible does say about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And if you don't want to use the word Trinity, don't, but you'll have to go a long way around to use more language to explain what you believe.

If you use the word Trinity, it's very clear. If you say, "We are gods," that's not very clear, especially if you don't mean to say that we're gods. If you're saying we are gods, then it's very clear to say we are gods. But if you're not saying we are gods and you say we are gods, that's rather confusing. And I would just say using confusing language is not very helpful. Thank you for your call though. I want to try to get one more call in if I can here. It's been longest for Allen in Lowell, Massachusetts. Allen, welcome.

Allen: Hey Steve, how are you? I appreciate your ministry. This past Sunday I was at my Christian church and about halfway through I noticed that two young ladies in the row in front of me, they might have been 20, 21 years old, I noticed that they were in a same-sex relationship and they took the host and did all that stuff and were very engaged and very happy.

I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I had an immediate reaction and then I had some other thoughts, so I spoke to the pastor for a couple minutes on the way out and he said that occasionally people like that will come in. He says they don't endorse that, but everybody's welcome. And that answer didn't really surprise me. So I'm wondering what they should, how they should approach that or how they should handle those things, if they should handle them at all.

Steve Gregg: Let me try to answer that if I can. First of all, the church can hardly say that no one is allowed to come inside unless we know you are a Christian. Now, we know that if somebody is in a same-sex relationship, that they are not following Christ. They may think they are because many people have been taught that all it means to be a Christian is to say you believe in Jesus, and anyone can say that and they can live in any way they want to and say that.

And in some churches, and maybe the church these women went to before, that's enough. But I think a church should make very clear, there may be people here in the church who are not followers of Christ and who are not living according to Christ's standards. And we can't kick people out, or we don't mean to be rude, but we can say we don't recognize people who are living in sexual immorality as people who are walking with God, because the Bible says such people will not inherit the kingdom of God.

So when we pass out the elements, I think we should suggest that if you're not following Christ and you're not living according to God's standards, you probably shouldn't be a participant in this. And we'd like to talk to you afterwards and find out what your intentions are. I'm out of time, but I understand the problem. You're listening to the Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk again tomorrow. God bless.